1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to that field of apparatus used to cut moving work to a specified length. More particularly this invention relates to mechanical apparatus, containing a plurality of cutting surfaces used to cut moving work to a specified length, which draws its cutting power from the moving work itself.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art apparatus used to cut moving work of wood composition or similar material have required some external power source, typically compressed air, electricity, or hydraulic power or a combination of these sources of power. For example, the work to be cut would proceed along its path until it triggered a micro-switch which in turn would control the external power source which would supply power to a cutting device which in turn would operate to sever the work. Such machines have inherent time lags and mechanical delays, the micro-switch takes a certain time to respond, compressed air requires time to transmit force from one point to another and is very noisy, and time lag is necessary to change the flow of hydraulic fluids. Because of the various time lags of the prior art machines, which were independent of the speed at which the moving work was cut, the length to which the work would be cut was not uniform over various operating speeds of the cutting machine, was not easily adjusted and was not easily determined prior to operation. This lack of uniformity in the length to which the work was cut caused the manufacturer to set the machine to cut to a longer length than desired in order to insure that if somewhere along the line an abnormally short cut was made, the contents of a given package of the cut work would meet the minimum weight, length and burn time specified on the package. In many cases this resulted in the manufacturer giving more of the product to the consumer than required, resulting in increased production costs to the manufacturer per unit sold, an inefficient use of raw materials, and decreased profit margin.
The prior art use of an externally controlled power source required considerable maintenance of the relatively complicated electrical, hydraulic or pneumatic power mechanism, accounting for as much as 80% of the time during which production was halted for repairs and/or maintenance (down time) of the machinery. By not using such external power sources, the present invention significantly reduces this "down time".